Re: Stable list vs versioning

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 11:26 AM, Greg KH <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 07, 2016 at 08:05:59AM -0700, Thomas Hellstrom wrote:
>> On 10/07/2016 07:18 AM, Greg KH wrote:
>> > On Fri, Oct 07, 2016 at 06:47:47AM -0700, Thomas Hellstrom wrote:
>> >> On 10/07/2016 05:48 AM, Greg KH wrote:
>> >>> On Thu, Oct 06, 2016 at 09:51:08PM -0700, Thomas Hellstrom wrote:
>> >>>> On 10/06/2016 09:22 PM, Greg KH wrote:
>> >>>>> On Thu, Oct 06, 2016 at 09:19:50PM -0700, Thomas Hellstrom wrote:
>> >>>>>> Hi!
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> On 10/06/2016 08:52 PM, Greg KH wrote:
>> >>>>>>> On Thu, Oct 06, 2016 at 06:54:43PM -0700, Thomas Hellstrom wrote:
>> >>>>>>>> Hi, Stable!
>> >>>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>> As you might be aware of, some companies that maintain linux kernel
>> >>>>>>>> drivers have the habit of assigning each driver change a new version
>> >>>>>>>> number.
>> >>>>>>> And, as you have found out, that's a horrible thing to do for Linux and
>> >>>>>>> doesn't work at all :)
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> Just because it works for other slower-moving operating systems, I
>> >>>>>>> wouldn't recommend doing it for Linux.
>> >>>>>> Yes, I'm fully aware of the difficulties, though I was hoping that I,
>> >>>>>> with the help some bright ideas from the list could come up with a
>> >>>>>> clever way to make everybody happy.
>> >>>>> But who has the problem here really?  Not the kernel community or
>> >>>>> developers, but rather an odd set of unskilled QA people (your word, not
>> >>>>> mine.)
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Why can't they get more "skill"?  :)
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> thanks,
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> greg k-h
>> >>>> Well, I would in no way call our QA people unskilled just because they
>> >>>> in general don't have the skill to know how to locate a particular,
>> >>>> sometimes well-hidden git repo and find out if a certain bug is fixed or
>> >>>> not. Not even Einstein knew how to do that ;)
>> >>> Huh?  All of the kernel trees we "release" are in one single repo, and
>> >>> it is very well known (linked to off of the kernel.org site front page):
>> >>>   https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__git.kernel.org_cgit_linux_kernel_git_stable_linux-2Dstable.git&d=CwIBAg&c=Sqcl0Ez6M0X8aeM67LKIiDJAXVeAw-YihVMNtXt-uEs&r=vpukPkBtpoNQp2IUKuFviOmPNYWVKmen3Jeeu55zmEA&m=2nFSKLtpsbVgl3FEz2G3Io4y14rAxcjmJACORglPiwI&s=E02w2V0waHQkqaQ4KAcPYM3o2nWfYavhd12uJDJ24dI&e=
>> >>>
>> >>> How is that difficult to find?
>> >> The "vanilla" stable ones are easy. The distro ones may not be, save
>> >> Ubuntu that sometimes "take over" a stable tree. Typically the kernels
>> >> we test are a distro-modified version of a stable tree.
>> > Then go complain to the distros!  And even then, all of them keep their
>> > kernels in pretty well-known, and documented, locations.  If not, go bug
>> > them, there is nothing we can do about it.
>> >
>> > Also, shouldn't your QA scripts just suck in the correct distro
>> > kernel/tree automatically?  No QA person should have to ever hunt for a
>> > kernel tree, that means you have not automated it, which seems very
>> > wrong to me.
>> >
>> >>>> But I won't try to argue here. I do think, though, that as long as
>> >>>> people believe the easier solution is to version each change they will
>> >>>> keep on doing that and unfortunately as a result important patches won't
>> >>>> get CC'd stable because that would mess up the versioning.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> From your answer I take it there is no interest from the stable
>> >>>> maintainers in helping solving this using some kind of mainline hash
>> >>>> registering tool. I guess perhaps another option is to locally automate
>> >>>> stable / distro git tree scanning.
>> >>> Maybe I really don't understand the "issue" you are trying to address
>> >>> here, can you try to rephrase it by showing a real example of what you
>> >>> are trying to solve?
>> >>>
>> >>> But again, there's nothing we can do about out-of-tree code, remember,
>> >>> they know where we are (and I'll take anything!), but we don't know
>> >>> where they are...
>> >>>
>> >>> thanks,
>> >>>
>> >>> greg k-h
>> >> Yes. The problem would be
>> >>
>> >> Given a *binary* version of distro kernel X, based on stable kernel Y.
>> >> What _upstreamed_ bugfix patches has touched our module since the stable
>> >> branch was created? Let's assume the distro git tree is hard to find.
>> >>
>> >> a) Now if stable maintainers and distro kernel maintainers could use a
>> >> flag "record commit id" to the git am command, the mainline commit id
>> >> would be added to a binary visible table in the module, problem solved.
>> > But the stable mantainers DO all do that already today!  That info is
>> > all there, and has been there, for over a decade!  Just look at every
>> > commit in the stable kernel branches, it has that information for you,
>> > in a semi-easy format to parse.
>>
>> Indeed they do, but the idea here was to have that information
>> extractable from a binary, but that would have required cooperation both
>> from the stable maintainers and the distro maintainers (who typically
>> are on this list). That's why I posted.
>
> You can't extract each individual patch information from a binary, how
> would you encode 10k patches in every release?
>
> Oh wait, look, we already do that with the git commit id as part of the
> version number, you always know exactly what is contained in that binary
> based on that.
>
> So again, the community has already done this for you, I don't know why
> you are ignoring it :(
>
> And again, if you have problems with distro source trees, go complain to
> them.  Yes, there are some distro developers on this list, but it's not
> a distro-specific place to complain to them about things, you know
> better than that...

I am curious which distros they're having trouble finding the kernel
tree for though.

josh
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe stable" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html




[Index of Archives]     [Linux Kernel]     [Kernel Development Newbies]     [Linux USB Devel]     [Video for Linux]     [Linux Audio Users]     [Yosemite Hiking]     [Linux Kernel]     [Linux SCSI]